Call that a bonfire of the quangos?

Cat Stevens was wrong: the first cut isn’t the deepest, indeed the first cut is often painfully slow.

In the case of the bloated 42-stone shut-in that is Britain’s semi-Soviet public sector one would have thought there was plenty of flab to choose from. Yet having promised us a “bonfire of the quangos”, a term first used by Gordon Brown (of all people) in 1995, quangos that cost anywhere between £17 billion and £64 billion a year, the Government has failed to deliver. That, at least, is the view of Bernard Jenkin MP, the chairman of the committee Public Administration select committee, who said: “The whole process was rushed and poorly handled and should have been thought through a lot more. This was a fantastic opportunity to help build the Big Society and save money at the same time, but it has been botched.”

Indeed, for despite plans to abolish 192 of Britain’s estimated 901 quangos, it turns out that just 29 will disappear altogether, while some 30 will turn into “committees of experts”; what the difference is between a quango and a “committee of experts” is hard to tell, but as a rule any concept or idea that needs to be rebranded generally has a stink around it (think toilets, dodgy nuclear power stations, and socialism, or "fairness" as it's now called).

Even the name “committee of experts” has an unholy paternalist air to it, and suggests that whatever the rhetoric, this government would rather keep things out of the reach of the public.

On the other hand Jenkin’s suggestion that their responsibilities should be handed over to charities seems even worse, since presumably these charities would still receive government help (otherwise why not just sell them off?). Paying charities with taxpayer’s money only helps to make them semi-official arms of the state that use their moral gravitas to campaign for more state funding.

Indeed, since the cuts were announced Radio 4’s Today programme has given a daily, uncontested voice to taxpayer-funded organisations warning about the perilous effects of the cuts, warnings that would be described as “moral panic” were they from the other side of the spectrum. Yet I don’t recall the BBC giving the Taxpayer Alliance (which isn’t funded by the taxpayer) much airtime during Gordon Brown’s binge years. They may as well rebrand the programme "CutsWatch".

Rather, the state should be reining in its involvement in charities, and reintroducing a clear distinction between the state and the private sector, the first step towards remoralising government.

The Government faces an almighty task implementing these cuts, for as Douglas Carswell pointed out: “Every government over the past generation has talked about quango ‘bonfires’. And not a single post-war government has ever successfully reduced government spending.”

The answer, he says, is a reform of Parliament:

“Since the Civil War, Parliament's purpose is supposed to be overseeing how our taxes are spent. Instead of rubber stamping government spending decisions as they've done for decades, the Commons needs to assert its right to say ‘no’. Until then, Whitehall's spend-spend quango culture will persist once ministers attention is inevitably occupied elsewhere.

“With Commons committees now freed from control by Whips, they should take on the role of annually approving departmental and quango budgets. No approval, no money.”

I'll buy that, but I’m not sure Supercam, the heir to Macmillan and not the greatest lover of backbench Tory MPs, will go for it. In the meantime if this is their idea of a bonfire I don’t think Francis Maude will be invited to organise the annual Eleventh night celebrations in Northern Ireland any time soon.